When two of the 1990s biggest sitcoms feuded
Sitcoms were all the rage in the 1990s. Whilst Friends gets all the credit these days, it could be argued that the most important show of the era was the mighty Seinfeld. Created by its namesake Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm fame, the show followed a fictionalised version of Jerry and his friends George Costanza (Jason Alexander), Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards). They all live and work in New York City, and that’s it. The show is famously ‘about nothing’ after all.
Seinfeld helped establish and popularise many core components of the sitcom format, laying the groundwork for so many other great shows that followed. Its given a lot to culture, least of all its iconic and meme-worthy theme tune. However, being at the top leaves you vulnerable, as the series found out when it became embroiled in a rivalry with another top show of the era.
The year before Seinfeld debuted on NBC, Roseanne broadcast its first episode on rival network ABC. starring Roseanne Barr as the similarly-named Roseanne Conner, a woman living with her family in Illinois, the show proved to be extremely popular. It originally ran for nine seasons and briefly returned in 2018, before controversial tweets from Barr led to its cancellation.
During that original stint on TV, Barr’s real-life husband at the time Tom Arnold found himself beefing with his wife’s competition. Arnold, who also had a part on Roseanne, was driving to work one day when he found that his designated parking space had been taken by someone else. Who was it? None other than Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Incessenced by this apparent sleight against him, Arnold left a note reading, ‘How stupid are you? Move your fucking car, you asshole!’ on her windscreen. That’s when things kicked off.
Alexander and David found out about the incident and spoke with Arnold about his behaviour. Did he calm down after this intervention? Of course not. According to the book Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Arnold responded by attaching a Polaroid of a naked bum to her car and writing a ‘vulgar word’ in soap across the window. A mature and grown-up response, we can all agree, but there might be more to this story than meets the eye.
According to Arnold himself on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, he had nothing to do with the Polaroid and soap incident. “I wrote a note, I didn’t know it was her car at the time,” he confessed. “And then my ex-wife Roseanne took a Polaroid of [her former Roseanne costar] John Goodman’s naked ass, and put that on Julia’s car.” This isn’t entirely implausible. Barr went on an episode of Late Night with David Letterman around this time and publicly called Louis-Dreyfus a ‘bitch’ and slammed Seinfeld for trying to be too much like the works of Samuel Beckett. In a seething response, Alexander is quoted saying, “I am willing to bet that she has never read anything Beckett ever wrote.”
Whatever truly happened that fateful day in the parking lot, this brief, ultimately petty spat remains a curious footnote in the story of 90s comedy and one of the many feuds from the set of Seinfeld, with a story plucked straight from its own writing room.
